Losing It - Understanding What Makes Us Snap (Encore with Elisabeth Corey)
Apr 2, 2024
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Trauma recovery expert Elisabeth Corey joins Janet to discuss the impact of childhood trauma on parenting behaviors. They explore breaking cycles of reactive responses and healing past experiences to become better parents. The conversation highlights self-awareness, emotional healing, self-compassion, and understanding triggers of anger and shame. They emphasize the importance of recognizing emotions, promoting self-compassion, and fostering healthy emotional expression in children.
Unresolved childhood trauma can lead to difficulty in emotional regulation and projecting past experiences onto children.
Healing from trauma involves emotional expression, self-compassion, and breaking the cycle of reactive behavior in parenting.
Deep dives
Understanding Trauma as a Response and its Impact on Parenting
Trauma is not always an extreme event but can also stem from difficulties in processing certain experiences during childhood, leading to challenges in emotional regulation. Parents who have unresolved trauma may project their past experiences onto their children, creating a cycle of hyper-vigilance and fear. This can result in difficulties setting boundaries and outbursts of anger towards their children, often triggered by past unprocessed emotions.
Recognizing Trauma Triggers and Breaking Negative Patterns
Trauma triggers, often rooted in specific childhood experiences such as shame or emotional abandonment, can resurface in parenting. Parents may unknowingly suppress certain traits or emotions in their children due to their own unresolved issues. Emotional expression, especially around anger, may be suppressed leading to challenges in parenting authenticity and emotional containment.
Healing Through Self-Compassion and Emotional Awareness
Healing from trauma involves reconnecting with oneself through practices like emotional journaling to understand the underlying emotions triggering reactive responses. By allowing space for emotional expression and self-compassion, parents can break the cycle of reactive behavior and foster a more nurturing relationship with their children. Engaging in inner dialogue and acknowledging and soothing emotional responses can lead to improved emotional regulation and enhanced parenting skills.
Janet is joined by trauma recovery expert Elisabeth Corey to answer a parent’s email about her struggles to become a respectful parent. This mom says certain behaviors of her 2.5-year old daughter set her off. “I don’t stay calm, focused, kind to my child.” And she believes her own upbringing (“in no way respectful”) is the root cause of her reactions. She is overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising her child and wants to know: “What can I do to help myself?” Janet and Elisabeth consider the common underlying issues of our own childhoods and how we can recognize and heal negative cycles to become better parents.
Elisabeth's work and free resources for parents are available on her site at: www.BeatingTrauma.com
For more advice on common parenting issues, please check out Janet's best-selling books on Audible. Paperbacks and e-books are available at Amazon. Also, her exclusive audio series "Sessions" is available for download. This is a collection of recorded one-on-one consultations with parents discussing their most immediate and pressing concerns (www.SessionsAudio.com).